Town Square

Freedom of Speech in Egypt

Original post made
by Silver Bullet, Midtown,
on Feb 22, 2007

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (Reuters) - An Alexandria court convicted an Egyptian blogger on Thursday for insulting both Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced him to four years in jail over his writings on the Internet.

Abdel Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student who has been in custody since November, was the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet writings. He was convicted in connection with eight articles he wrote since 2004.

Rights groups and opposition bloggers have watched Suleiman's case closely, and said they feared a conviction could set a legal precedent limiting Internet freedom in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country.

The lack of comments is not surprising. This is a case of "dog bites man" -- nobody expects any different. Which yet again demonstrates the truth that modern antisemitism is cloaked in the double standard of no expectations from the Arabs and impossible expectations from the Jews.

Israel is still the only country regularly found in "violation of human rights" by the UN "improved" Human Rights Council. Don't expect to see Iran, or China, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or even Sudan, being condemned there. Who cares that a blogger was imprisoned in Egypt for insulting Mubarak?

Posted by Draw the Line
a resident of Stanford
on Feb 28, 2007 at 11:47 am

You are absolutely correct in your analysis.

Well said. Your point gets lost in all the hoopla about how criticism of Israel isn't anti-semitic, which in and of itself is a true statement. Why people fail to see the anti-semitism is precisely because they fail to see the context of what you just said.

It would not be anti-semitic to criticize Israel if it were factually based AND if there were equally factually based criticism of the other middle east countries.

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